Ear Candy EXCLUSIVE: Interview with Doug Martsch of Built To Spill

Idaho indie stalwartsBuilt To Spill are playing in town tonight at Pyramid Brewery’s “Get Snowed In” concert ($18 Doors 7 p.m., show 9 p.m. Buy tickets here. ) BTS frontman Doug Martsch recently gave me a ring from his home in Boise and here is what he had to say about his group’s latest album (“You In Reverse,” one of the best Northwest records of the year), being called the elder statesman of indie rock and new material he’s working on. At the end of the interview he pays a mighty big comment to Modest Mouse. Read on for more.

EC: It’s been a pretty busy year for Built To Spill considering you released a long-awaited new record, you had eye surgery prior to SXSW (Martsch had a detached retina fixed) and recently lost a close friend (former BTS drummer Andy Capps passed died in May), I was curious if you’re the type of person who views the new year as an opportunity to get a fresh start or as just time progressing?

DM: I’m more of a time progressing type of person. When things like that happen, I think I don’t draw from my own personal life when I write music. If they come out it is just how my brain works. I don’t really tell stories or talk about specific things when I write songs.

EC: I read in a recent interview that you went on record as being a rather politically-minded person but politics doesn’t play a role in Built To Spill’s music. Do you think that in the future politics may come into play with your songwriting?

Built To Spill’s “You In Reverse” is one of the best NW records of the year.

DM: Maybe in vague ways. Just the way I think of music, um, I’m not really talented at telling stores or talking in concrete ideas. It’s all just, for me the words have to have certain sounds to them, that’s more important. The meter and the way the words work and sit with the melody. Different vowels and consonant sounds are more important to me that the content. I’d love to be able to write about specific subjects but I just don’t have it in me. It’s not my forte. Maybe someday I’ll be able to. I’m not against it at all, I just follow what I am naturally able to do with music and that’s just not it right now.

EC: Tell me a little about the recording of “You In Reverse,” an album that took several years to put out. How was working on that record different than what you’ve done on previous albums?

DM: The biggest difference, well a couple of big differences were working with Jim Roth, he’s played guitar with us for years and this was the first time we worked with him in the studio and he helped write the songs and that was great. Another big difference was working with a new producer. We’d worked with Phil Ek on most all of our records and for this album we worked with Steve Lobdell. So those are the main difference. Every album is its own experience, you know? Time marches on as you said earlier.

EC: Working with Phil Ek so much … he’s been a major part of what Built To Spill has done as far as work in the studio is concerned. Was it difficult to work with someone different or did it just work out as just being another record for you?

DM: It wasn’t difficult. I had a really good time making the record. There are a lot of things that were helpful working with Steve. Steve played a lot on the record and that was something Phil never did. It (“You In Reverse”) has a different sound. I think Phil can make things sound a little bigger than this record sounds, but in a way this record is closer to the sound that I wanted to get. The way Steve did it, it sounds a lot more like a band just playing in a room and not so big sounding. I don’t know, more of a real sound I guess.

I think that was a matter of the band just being more of a band than its ever been. In the past the records have sort of been put together a track at a time. We would go into the studio for the first week or two of recording and the stuff was unlistenable because the foundation of what was going to turn into songs didn’t sound good. Whereas this record we originally went in a recorded the whole thing with the band live but we didn’t use that because we thought we could make the drum sound better. So we isolated everything and put everything in one room and played all the songs and were able to sound more like a band than were have ever been, and we wanted to capture that.

EC: In my experience having seen Built To Spill live your band sounds completely different live than on record. How does the new material translate in a live setting? Does it have that same zing that the other material does live, sounding different live than on record? Or does it sound the same since the record was made to sound like a live band playing in a room?

DM: You know I’m not really sure. I get so far removed form stuff. When you go make a record and go to play it live sometimes you have certain limitations on things you can’t do that you did in the studio. Sometimes you do things that you think are improvements to the songs when you play them live. Even over the years playing a song live you make adjustments to them, you’re always trying to, you know, trying to make things as good as possible. Sometimes when you do that you lose focus on the song and what made it good in the first place, but that’s just natural.

With the new record, we only play a couple of those songs live. I guess we play four of them live and they’re pretty straightforward. I think they sound better live because the songs we play are pretty rocking songs and they just sound better because they are louder. There’s more energy behind them and they’ve been played more so they are probably a little more tighter than they are on the record. Sometimes we want things to sound like they do on the record, sometimes we want them to sound different. Sometimes we get it wrong, sometimes we, like I said, get away from what made the song good.

Some people are bummed out if they hear us play songs from “There’s Nothing Wrong With Love” and they don’t sound like they do on record. Well, we’re a different band now than we were back them. Scott (Plouf) plays drums different than Andy Capps did and everyone has different guitar tones than exist on that record and I would never want to play with the same guitar tones that are on that record. If we were to make “There’s Nothing Wrong With Love” today none of that would’ve ended up on the record. The way I like things to sound now are so different than the way I liked things to sound back then. We’re not going to travel with a twin reverb and try to make things sound like they do on the record.

Good news, Built To Spill has “You In Reverse” B-Sides and they are working on rough recordings of new material.

EC: Do you have any B-Sides or unreleased material that you like to slip into sets from “You In Reverse?” Is there any material that was recorded that didn’t make the record?

DM: There were a few songs and we played them live a little bit. We’ve been recording since that record came out. In July we recorded in four days in L.A. and in August in Chicago we recorded for four days and last month we were in Austin and recorded for a few days. Part of what we recorded was some left over things from “You In Reverse” and some new things. We’ve been sort of playing them a little live.

EC: Any plans for those recordings to see the light of day any time soon?

DM: No, not any time soon. We maybe recorded about seven or eight songs. I got ProTools during the summer so I am seeing if I can mess around with things here at home because we didn’t have any time to finish anything at all. We got basic tracks for all the songs and a few of the songs we recorded at multiple studios to see which place sounded better and we kind of concentrated on a couple of songs to do overdubs on at each place. Some of them might not be done, the songs, and some of them might be. Right now I’m considering them all demos.

EC: You have been called an elder statesman for indie rock. Is that a label you accept or is it something you’re not comfortable with?

DM: I don’t know. I guess I find it flattering that anyone cares about what I’m doing and that bands would point to us and say they were inspired by us. I kind of take it all with a grain of salt because if we weren’t around it would have been someone else. It has to do with timing and the region. Modest Mouse is one of the best bands ever I think and they just happened to be at the right age we were around and they happened to hear our record. It could have just as easily been some other band that set Isaac (Brock) off. I don’t feel like we are really responsible for it.